They were perfect gems. Not large, that
had not been the aim, but small, fair, uniform, and red to the core.
How intense, how spicy and aromatic!
But all the excellences of the apple are not confined to the cultivated
fruit. Occasionally a seedling springs up about the farm that produces
fruit of rare beauty and worth. In sections peculiarly adapted to the
apple, like a certain belt along the Hudson River, I have noticed that
most of the wild unbidden trees bear good, edible fruit. In cold and
ungenial districts, the seedlings are mostly sour and crabbed, but in
more favorable soils they are oftener mild and sweet. I know wild
apples that ripen in August, and that do not need, if it could be had,
Thoreau's sauce of sharp November air to be eaten with. At the foot of
a hill near me and striking its roots deep in the shale, is a giant
specimen of native tree that bears an apple that has about the
clearest, waxiest, most transparent complexion I ever saw. It is good
size, and the color of a tea-rose. Its quality is best appreciated in
the kitchen.
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